Bust of Cosimo I: Form and Material

Baccio Bandinelli’s marble Bust of Cosimo I was carved from a single piece of white marble. The portrait of Duke Cosimo I is centered frontally over the socle with the duke’s head turned to his left. Cosimo’s visage, familiar from various portraits in diverse media, is easily recognized.191 The socle bears the inscription “COS•MED / FLOR•DVX / •II•” which identifies the sitter as Cosimo de’ Medici, the second Florentine Duke.192

While his torso is centered and frontal, Cosimo’s right shoulder pulls back and his left is inclined forward. It is a subtle shift, but a significant decision made by Bandinelli that departed from much precedent. Although the text on the socle and frontal depiction of the torso suggest a viewer should stand centered to the base, Cosimo is best viewed from the right, where the turn of the body and twist of the head most invigorate the sculpture.

Cosimo’s smooth skin, masterfully carved, is blemish-free. His nose is shapely and lips ideally proportioned.193 Bulbous and heavy lidded, Cosimo’s eyes are similar to those depicted in Bronzino’s Cosimo I in Armor (fig. 38). Cosimo does not meet the viewer’s gaze. Rather his

190 _{Of the bust, Vasari noted, “una di marmo, la quale Of the bust, Vasari noted, “una di marmo, la quale è oggi nel}

medesimo palazzo nelle camera di sopra, e fu la migliore test ache facesse mai.” Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti

pittori scultori e architettori, Vol. V, 263. 191

For more on portraits of Cosimo, see Janet Cox-Rearick and Mary Westerman Bulgarella, “Public and Private Portraits of Cosimo de’ Medici and Eleonora di Toledo: Bronzino’s Paintings of his Ducal Patrons in Ottawa and Turin,” Artibus et Historiae 29, no. 49 (2004): 101-159; Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 15th – 18th Centuries, 79-120, 407-530.

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Part of Cosimo’s concentrated effort to establish a hereditary dukedom included this self-styling, which emphasized the Medici lineage as Florentine Dukes. It does not reflect the initial statues of the city, but is an argument by assertion. Cosimo’s insistence, consistency, and larger cultural and political policies were successful in transforming Florence into a court society and a hereditary principality.

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Although dated several years previous, a drawing by Pontormo in black chalk of Cosimo I in Profile shows a more distinctive – and less idealized – physiognomy.

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stare follows the turn of his head, with his pupils placed higher in his eyes and to the proper left, as though responding to action occurring in that direction. He is an authoritative figure: we can look at him, but he will not deign to meet our gaze.

Engaged not with the viewer but with a third party, the duke is presented as an active figure deep in concentration. His seriousness of purpose is expressed by his pursed lips and intense stare. Bandinelli enlivened the figure by tilting the head. Combined with the costume, discussed below, this single bust portrait suggests Cosimo as both active and contemplative.

His hair is distinctively-styled. His widow’s peak is consistent in representations of Cosimo in diverse media. Bandinelli has carved the locks atop his head in high relief. Styled into distinct and overlapping tufts, the soft waves taper as they fall over his forehead. Within the curls, Bandinelli has carefully carved a few individual strands, giving them volume and a degree of naturalism. The tufts continue around the crown of his head, descending to the bottom of his ear. On the sides of his skull they are less volumetric as they are tucked behind his ears. On either side of his face, a series of thin waves, less manicured than those atop his head, fall along a vertical axis. They are carved in low relief and divided into smaller tufts with individual strands delineated. His beard, which only covers part of his chin, is formed of four corkscrews. Instead of a sparse or scraggly beard, the hair has been shaped into whorls.

The uniformity of the styling of his hair and evolution of his beard correspond to Imperial Roman portraiture practices. Consistency of image was an important element in Imperial Roman portraiture, where the likeness of the emperor was often distributed over vast distances through the replication of sculpted portrait types and coins. One way this was achieved was through

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designating a clearly-recognizable imperial visage, with key traits that could be easily reproduced.194

For example, in 27 BCE a new type of portrait sculpture of Augustus emerged.195 A carefully orchestrated combination of idealized forms and distinct physiognomic features, the facial features of this type remained surprisingly fixed even as Augustus aged.196 Above all, his distinctive cowlick hairstyle was maintained in his portraiture throughout his rule and following his divination. The consistency of the emperor’s hairstyle remained a key characteristic of Imperial portraiture for centuries.197 Similarly, Cosimo’s hair thins over the years but his widow’s peak remains.

Karla Langedijk identified three distinct phases of Cosimo’s official portraiture that reflect his aging physiognomy.198 In each stage, there is a standard image from which there is little departure. The close control and dissemination of Cosimo’s image was not unusual for the period. Further, it too looked back to Imperial Roman strategies. Marcus Aurelius, for example, also had three well-defined periods of representation: as a youth, a bearded young man, and a mature individual. While his face matures slowly, the presence – and later fullness – of Marcus

194 _{Fejfer, Roman Portraits in Context, 405. For a more nuanced introduction to the creation and distribution of the}

Roman Emperor’s likeness, see Fejfer, 373-429.

195 _{For more Augustus’s self-presentation, see Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. by}

Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1988); Dietrich Boschung, Die Bildnisse des Augustus (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1993).

196 _{For a complete analysis of this type, see Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, especially pages}

98-100. Zanker observed, “It was reproduced in every part of the Empire and fixed the visual image of Augustus for all time, although it had little to do with his actual appearance.” 99

197 _{Fejfer, Roman Portraits in Context, 406. Fejfer noted that “the front locks of hair constituted an important}

element in the overall recognizability of an emperor’s portrait. At the same time they were a key element in the portrait that was easy to replicate.”

198

Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 15th – 18th Centuries, 79-120, 407-530 for her discussion of portraits of

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Aurelius’s beard is most indicative of his aging process. Like a Roman Emperor, Cosimo’s maturation was marked most conspicuously by his facial hair.

Cosimo’s beard is one characteristic that changes and progresses. Cosimo was still a teenager when he was elected in 1537. Bronzino depicted him as Orpheus by 1539 (fig. 76), at which time Cosimo’s beard was a patchy work in progress. In a period when most men sported beards, Cosimo too was determined to grow one.199 By the time Bandinelli portrayed the duke, Cosimo’s beard had developed. In his official portraits, Cosimo’s visage did not age and mature, remaining a youthful countenance for approximately twenty years. His beard, however, was consistently updated. In 1543 Bronzino painted Cosimo I in Armor, discussed in the preceding chapter.200 This portrait, in which he sports a wispy beard, became the standard representation of the young Cosimo. In the years following, Cosimo would be depicted with a fuller beard, as it grew along with his power and maturity. A beard was a way to separate men from boys, and Cosimo, who came to power unexpectedly at a young age, used its growth and fashioning to present himself first as a mature male and eventually as a majestic prince.201

A thick neck joins Cosimo’s head to his torso, where his arms are intentionally truncated just a few inches below the shoulder. There is the slightest hint of an unadorned arm below the costume before its truncation. Where the torso was rectangular in the Quattrocento with a linear

199 _{Douglas Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, Their Professions, and} Their Beards (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 197-203. Biow considers Cosimo I as a case

study of an individual – and leader – who struggled to grow a beard and assert his individuality in this way. He traces the development of Cosimo’s facial hair, from his late teenage years to the 1560s.

200 _{See Chapter Three, pages 87-89; figure 38.}

201 _{“Cosimo I’s insistence on growing a bear at once calls attention to his desire to impress on people in these}

official portraits an image of his ‘majesty,’ his legitimate princely right to rule. Biow, On the Importance of Being

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termination, here the lower termination curves in with the pectoral muscles. The result is a lighter figure that seems more mobile than the stiffness and heaviness of a blocky, square shape.

Cosimo I wears an antique-inspired cuirass (fig. 77). The cuirass was not worn by ordinary soldiers in Imperial Rome. Rather, as Carolyn Springer elucidates, it was reserved for important officers, where “The powerfully articulated musculature, formalized stomach, and rectangular chest reflected a physical ideal that was associated metaphorically with the highest military and moral virtue.”202

The cuirass was a common element in Imperial Roman portrait busts. As the following analysis reveals, the shape and ornamental motifs reference classical precedents while incorporating contemporary components. Tight fitting, the cuirass reveals the pectoral muscles beneath and responds to the contours of his upper chest, especially where it moves across and indents inward toward the armpits. Like the Augustus of Prima Porta and other classical antecedents, Cosimo’s cuirass is at once armor, intended to protect the body, while revealing the body beneath. The suggested power of Cosimo’s taut thorax is revealed without exposing it.

On his shoulders and upper arms, Cosimo does not wear contempory pauldrons, which would be recognizable as overlapping, horizontally-oriented metallic ringlets.203 Rather leather straps ring his arm, arranged vertically. These pteruges – or straps – were common in the antique world, where they were stitched together into leather skirts or on the shoulders as epaulettes. Before the popularity of plate armor, pteruges allowed for ease of movement and joints to bend while still offering protection. Around the armholes are animal heads carved in low-relief.

202 _{Carolyn Springer, Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,}

2010), 25. Springer notes that the thorax was democratized in Christian Rome.

203 _{These pieces of armor were primarily made up of lames that were riveted together in an overlapping pattern.}

Lames were especially important for body parts that needed freedom of movement, as they offered flexibility and protection.

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Currently, there is no clear understanding of the iconographic meaning of these figures, which include a bull and eagle.204

There is a distinct v-shape to the top of the cuirass with a thin band of floral

ornamentation. Only small details of the symmetrical decoration are visible. A goat’s head – specifically the astrological symbol of the Capricorn – is centered on Cosimo’s chest. This naturalistically-carved Capricorn, which is discussed in greater detail below, stares out intently from the cuirass. His twisting horns trace the v-shape of the cuirass’s upper edge, while his beard rests in the crevice between Cosimo’s pectoral muscles. A mascaron with a snake-haired Gorgon is positioned to either side of the Capricorn. On his chest Cosimo sports his personal, astrological sign and two apotropaic Gorgons. These important iconographic elements permitted Bandinelli to demonstrate his mastery of marble carving. Throughout the cuirass, he added many distinctive details, such as the rough texture on the Capricorn’s horns.

A wide strap descends from each shoulder, obscuring the low relief ornamentation carved about the collar. Each strap has a sunken interior area, where Bandinelli has created the

suggestion of scale armor. At the bottom of each is a lion holding a diamond ring in its mouth. The lion-and-ring motif was a Medici emblem favored by Pope Leo X. The diamond ring was an old Medici family device, often incorporated into artworks they commissioned, such as the pattern on Minerva’s gown in Botticelli’s Minerva and the Centaur (figs. 78-79). The humanist Paolo Giovio, who wrote a treatise on heraldic devices, describes two versions of the ring motif: three interlocking rings, and a ring with three feathers.205 The former he connected with Cosimo

204 _{One suggestion is that they relate to the labors of Hercules, as proposed in Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali,}

eds., Bronzino, Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici (Firenze: Mandragora, 2010), 118. This proposal would further amalgamate Cosimo I, the city of Florence, and the ancient hero.

205

Paolo Giovio, Dialogo dell’imprese military et amorare (Lyon:Guglielmo Roviglio, 1559). Giovio discusses Medici symbols pages 40-55, and the rings in particular pages 40-42.

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il Vecchio, though he admitted that he could never discover the symbolic significance of the motif. The latter he attributed to Lorenzo il Magnifico, who adapted his grandfather’s symbol. He inserted a religious tenor by adding three feathers, each of a different color – red, green, and white – to correspond to the three Catholic virtues. Thus the diamond rings, while they do not precisely match either the elder Cosimo’s or Lorenzo’s imprese, connect Cosimo I with the senior branch of the Medici family.

The lion was a familiar symbol in Republican Florentine imagery that was also adopted by the Medici. In addition to its importance as the symbolic Marzocco common to Florentine civic imagery, the lion was connected to Hercules and the pelt of the Nemean Lion with which he was often depicted. Hercules was a well-established symbol in civic imagery and the identity of the city since the late thirteenth century.206 According to one tradition, Hercules was the legendary founder of Florence. He appeared on coinage and even on major monuments, including the Cathedral complex. The Medici began to assimilate Hercules as a symbol in the fifteenth century, and made the connection explicit with Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus.

As David Greve has observed, adopting the Hercules-Florentine imagery, Bandinelli did more than create a correlation between the classical hero and Cosimo.207 By this time, Hercules was already recognized as a stand-in for Florence. Thus, by grafting Herculean imagery onto the cuirass, Cosimo assumes a civic identity. He is at once a stand-in for Florence and her protector. Further, Hercules was connected in Renaissance thought with virtuous rulers.208 He served as an

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The classic text on Hercules imagery in Renaissance Florence remains Leopold D. Ettlinger, “Hercules Florentinus,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 16, vol. 2 (1972): 119-142.

207 _{Greve, Status und Statue, 255.}

208 _{Sarah Blake McHam, “Public Sculpture in Renaissance Florence.” See especially page 168, and footnote 61,}

page 185 for literature related to Hercules and exemplary rulers. Additionally, McHam notes the strong presence of this idea already in the preceding century.

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exemplar for princes. Thus the lions, with their Herculean connection, suggest that Cosimo is an exemplary ruler. The motif further defines Cosimo’s civic and familial identity. This singular cuirass, worn by Cosimo, contains the most familiar Florentine and Medicean heraldic emblems, grafting both a Florentine and Medicean identity onto Cosimo I. Equally important as Cosimo’s dress is the manner in which the bust was displayed.